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Wired is running a piece on the big idea of Robin Chase — the founder of Zipcar — that we need to build our smart power grid on open standards and include cars as nodes in a mesh network. "'Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers and tanks and airplanes are running around using mesh networks,' said Chase. 'It works, it's secure, it's robust. If a node or device disappears, the network just reroutes the data.' And, perhaps most important, it's in motion. ... Build a smart electrical grid that uses Internet protocols and puts a mesh network device in every structure that has an electric meter. Sweep out the half dozen networks in our cars and replace them with an open, Internet-based platform. Add a mesh router. A nationwide mesh cloud will form, linking vehicles that can connect with one another and with the rest of the network. It's cooperative gain gone national, gone mobile, gone open."

Not to rain on your parade here, because I really would love a sweet mesh network, but our phones and PDAs are already used by the gov to track us - remember that the FBI can turn on the voice mic (and for sure the GPS and maybe the camera by now) of any phone - even if that phone doesn't appear to be on.

Hell, I'd like the ability to overlay the windshield with a HUD conveying speed information and wheel angles so I know what everyone around me is doing. Maybe shade the lanes so I know when it's safe to change. Or something. Apple will figure it out when they produce the iCar system, found only in select fancy-ass cars.